Fish in the Sea
by Teesa
Summary: Scott Hall/Kevin Nash--SLASH-- Scott and Kevin reflect on their relationship, past, present...future?


There's someone in my house. It's not me, seeing as I'm at the front door with my key. What the fuck? Please, please tell me that I didn't leave my door unlocked for the entire two nights I was in the hospital? Otherwise, I'll have some wino bum camping out in my bedroom. 

I'm the only wino bum allowed to do that. 

With a sigh, and a mental shrug, I open the door quietly, slipping inside and setting the little plastic bag with my clothes in it that the hospitals always insist on giving you.

The cab pulls away quietly as I close the door. There's something cooking, smells great, and music coming from the kitchen, some sort of pop song. 

I slink closer and relax as I hear the familiar voice singing along with the radio. 

"Don't know how you met me, don't know why you can't turn around and say good bye. All you know is when I'm with you, I make you free, and swim through your veins like a fish in the sea." 

Kevin should not sing. Despite that, I couldn't be happier to hear that voice. I miss seeing him all the time now that he's moved away. 

"I'm singing: Follow me and everything is all right. I'll be the one that tucks you in at night. And if you wanna leave I can guarantee, you won't find nobody else like me."

Well that's the fucking truth. I always used to say that Kev and I were soul mates. It's probably true. When we're together, and things are good, they're the best. When they're bad, and they were bad a lot, I spend most of my time basically ripping him apart. 

Which is part of the reason why we're not together any more. We still get together as friends, but we've buried the rest. Much as I love him, I'm not good for him, and I'm not sure he's good for me. 

And if once in a while I wake up, hard and gasping from a dream of his gentle hands, and sweet mouth; and if once in a while, I roll over and want to cry when there's not a solid body to hold? It's worth it, to know that he's free to find someone who'll treat him right. And I'm free to try my hardest to stay clean. 

And most of all, I'll know that he's safe from the shit that seems to follow me around like my shadow. 

Course, I find it funny as hell that after all those years of drinking and doing drugs, when I finally get clean, that's when I end up in the hospital. Probably from the concussions, they tell me. Just a little seizure, might never happen again. 

I know my luck. I'm not holding my breath.

"Won't give you money, I can't give you the sky, you're better off if you don't ask why. I'm not the reason that you go astray and, you're better off if you don't ask me to stay."

I wait 'til the song goes into an instrumental before I finally speak. "Hey, Chico."

Kevin turns quickly to face me, grinning. "Hey."

I smile. "Not that I don't appreciate it, but what're you doing in my kitchen?"

"Was in the neighborhood?"

"And decided to make spaghetti?" I cross to the refrigerator, and peek in. "Along with enough food to feed the army?"

"Yeah," he says shortly, turning back to the stove and stirring harder than needed. 

Uh-oh. Kev's pissed. What did I do now? "Kev?"

"Yeah?"

"What's wrong?" 

"Not a fucking thing. Why?"

"No reason, really. Just that the pan is going to dent if you keep stirring like that, Chico," I say, trying for a light tone. Remind me not to do that again. 

"What could be wrong? I go online this morning, and read on the wrestling boards that my ex-lover and best friend has been in the hospital for a couple of days after having a seizure at the mall. Then, I go to my e-mail, and find a panicked note from another of our friends, asking me if I know anything about it."

"I'm sorry, I just-"

"Yeah, I know. You didn't think. You never think. At least when you-" He stops, turning back to the pot, but not before I see the way he pulls his lip between his teeth, like he's stopping the words he knows he shouldn't say.

"When I was drunk, I had an excuse for it? Is that what you were thinking?" I know I've hit the nail on the head when he flinches. "Jesus, Kevin. They still don't know why I had it, there wasn't anything to tell you!"

"How about that you were in the hospital? That you had collapsed in a public place? That you were sick?"

"There wasn't anything you could have done, babe. They just kept me for observation and testing. I didn't even bump my head when I fell."

"That doesn't matter! How do you think I felt, seeing the words "Scott Hall in Hospital," as a headline on Wrestlezone? How do you think I felt, to know that Dave-fucking-Meltzer knew that you were sick before me? Hell, before any of us?"

What the fuck is his problem? "It wasn't a big deal! Just a little blip on the radar of life. What, I was supposed to call Hunter, still drugged out on pain meds from having his whole knee opened, and bitch about a little black out? Or maybe Shawn, so I could hear just how fucking stupid I sounded all these years, drunk and stoned out of my head?"

"You could have called me. Or Sean."

I shake my head. "You have lives, baby. I'd have called if it was something important-"

"And what would have been important, Scotty? Dammit, don't you get it? YOU are important to us, to me. If anything happened to you, I'd-"

"Don't. Please." I shake my head, feeling the curls brushing at the back of my neck. "If we're going to have this fight, I need a shower first." I hold up my hand and back out of the room. "I'll be back when I feel human."

I hate hospitals. No matter how well you wash in their showers, you never feel clean. There's this antiseptic smell that clings to you, leaves a film. 

One of the benefits to the time in WCW is that I'm not cash strapped, so I've got a great shower, one of those oversized ones that has multiple shower heads. The hosebeast used to complain about that—she swore I aimed them to drown her. She's not completely wrong. 

Now, I turn them up to full blast, and relax, letting the heat and steam wash away two days of hospital dirt.

By the time I get out, I'm almost feeling good. A few good yanks of a brush through the curls, and I'm almost looking good. Mousse helps the frizz, and I figure I'm as ready as I'm ever going to be to face Kevin. 

This would be so much easier if I didn't love him.

The spaghetti's on the table when I head down, and the kitchen is filled with the wonderful smell of garlic bread browning. 

Kevin glances up. "Feel better?"

I smile, pulling a button down Hawaiian print shirt on, and letting it hang open. "Much, thanks." I pull a bottle of Evian out of the fridge, and wait silently for him to speak. 

"I'm sorry I jumped on you like that."

Well, hadn't expected that. "Huh?" I say intelligently. 

"I'm sorry. I just…..You know how I feel about you, baby. It really bothered me to think that if something major happened, I wouldn't know until I read it online."

I look at the table. "You'd know, Kev."

"How? You planning on having Meltzer call me?"

"I still have you listed as next of kin," I say quietly. 

I know, it's unfair as hell to toss that out like some kind or atom bomb, but what am I going to do? 

"Why?" his voice is just as soft, just as quiet.

Jesus, Kevin. Don't fucking do this to me. To us. 

Silence hangs in the room for a few minutes, until the buzzer goes off, and makes us both jump. He stands up, pulling the garlic bread out of the oven and sitting it on the table. 

I know I'm a pussy, but that doesn't stop me from taking a piece, nibbling on it like I didn't just hear him. Dammit. We talked about this when we stopped seeing each other. Why does he have to push? 

He sits a plate of spaghetti in front of me, and I glance up, giving him a tentative smile. He doesn't smile back, just sits across from me and starts eating his own food.

The silence stretches between us as we eat, a thick, smothering blanket over the room. Finally, I can't take it anymore. "You know why."

He looks up, as though he hadn't expected me to answer. Bullshit, Kevin. You know that the silent treatment always works.

"No, I don't."

"Kevin," I half-growl.

"Is it that fucking hard for you to say?"

"We agreed to split up-"

"No. You agreed. You told me that you needed to find yourself, and two weeks later you had remarried the hosebeast. Yeah, I love you Kev, but I'm going to go fuck my ex-wife, who splashed my drinking problem all over the goddamned Enquirer!" He slams one hand on the table, and I flinch. 

"It wasn't my fucking choice, you sonofabitch!" Oh. Fuck. That wasn't in my head, was it? "I-"

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't mean anything."

"You meant something. What are you talking about?"

"Kevin, let it drop. Please. I'm just tired, and-"

He stands up, so I do, too, backing away from him slowly, hands up like I think I can placate him. I know better. I've seen him in this mood before. "Scott, what the hell are you hiding?"

I shake my head, jumping as my back bumps the countertop. "Come on, Kev-"

"Just fucking tell me, Scotty! What did you mean, 'it wasn't your choice?' Whose choice was it, then?" He starts at a bellow, but half way through his voice softens. "Talk to me."

I find that I'm suddenly irrationally angry. At him, at myself, at life. "You want to know why I didn't have a choice? Fine." 

I push past him, ducking under his hand to stomp into my study, over to the safe hidden in the floor. A few twirls later, I have an envelope in my hand, and am stalking back to the kitchen. "Here." 

Kevin blinks as I slam it on the table, staring at the plain manila envelope. "What is that?"

"Take a look, if you're so hot to know. I'm going to eat." I scoop up the plate, heading into the dining room. 

I'm halfway through the plate when he comes in, pale as a ghost, and shaking. "How?" He sits the envelope down, and the contents spill out, glossy pictures, in glorious black and white. 

He and I, touching, making love, kissing. Kevin with his lips around my cock, him arching his back as I slid inside him, fucked him slow and deep. 

I smile bitterly. "How do you think? The hosebeast hired someone to follow us, to get pictures. The deal to keep them out of the tabloids, or worse, out of Bisch's hands, was to come back to her."

"And you thought that was a good idea?" 

"Not really, but what was I going to do? I was already your liability, Kev. With those, Hogan would have made you his bitch for sure. Even Russo couldn't have helped you." I shrugged. "And if you're honest, you were better off without me, baby."

"Never. Jesus, Scotty, why didn't you tell me? We would have handled it."

"Handled it? How the hell would we have handled having these in the Enquirer? We'd never have worked again."

"You think my career is more important to me than you are?"

I shake my head. "No, I know you'd have stood by me, but it wouldn't have been fair to you." 

"I wouldn't have cared, baby. All I wanted was you."

I close my eyes, turning away from him. 

"It's still all I want."

I look up sharply. "You can't-"

"What, I can't still love you? I can't still go to bed every night wishing you were next to me? I can't wake up every morning, missing you? I can't watch television and go to elbow you when someone makes one of those bad jokes you always laughed at, then want to curl in a ball and die when I realize that you're not there to laugh with me?" He tosses his hair out of his face, and lowers his eyes. "I can't get hard every time I hear your voice? I can't dream of you every night, and wake up in sticky sheets?"

"It's been three years, Kevin!"

"Three years, three decades. I'll still love you."

I choke back a sob. "How can you?"

I feel him pull out the chair that I'm in, and feel him shift, grunting softly, but I don't look up until I feel his hand under my chin. "How can I not? Especially now, when I'm so damned proud of you for getting it together." The tears sliding down his cheeks make me feel a little less alone somehow.

"I love you," I manage. "And I miss you, too."

His arms slide around me. "I know you're not ready yet, but someday soon, we're going to be back together, baby. Count on it."

I let myself relax into his arms, just for a moment, not thinking about anything beyond this moment, feeling safe and at home. Maybe we'll be together, maybe not. I think we're both ready to try again, and that's what matters right now.

~*~*~*~ Finis ~*~*~*~ 


End file.
